George hated living in big cities, and was quite satisfied to take a job as director of education for a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in Wyoming.

The family moved back to Los Angeles in 1942, where Gene enrolled in Fairfax High School at the age of thirteen.

During that time he also played violin in the school orchestra, excelled in gymnastics, and got a summer job as an apprentice lapidary.

Although Shoemaker had already enrolled in a doctoral program at Princeton University, he returned to California to serve as best man at Richard's wedding in 1950.

Nevertheless, the couple kept in touch while Shoemaker spent the next year in Princeton, followed by a two-week vacation touring the Colorado Plateau.

She reportedly told others that listening to Shoemaker explain geology turned a boring subject into an exciting and interesting pursuit of knowledge.

[10] The United States Geological Survey (USGS) hired Shoemaker in 1950, and he maintained an association with the organisation for the rest of his career.

His next mission was to study volcanic processes, since other investigators had already noticed that uranium deposits were often located in the vents of ancient volcanoes.

About the same time, G. K. Gilbert, the chief geologist of the USGS, examined the crater and announced that it had been created by an explosive venting of volcanic steam.

A majority of scientists accepted Gilbert's explanation of the cause of the crater, and it remained the conventional wisdom until Shoemaker's investigations half a century later.

[9] For his PhD degree at Princeton (1960), under the guidance of Harry Hammond Hess, Shoemaker studied the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor Crater.

[11]: 69, 74–75, 78–79, 81–85, 99–100 In 1960, Shoemaker directed a team at the USGS center in Menlo Park, California, to generate the first geologic map of the Moon using photographs taken by Francis G. Pease.

In 1949, Ralph Baldwin had articulated that the Moon's craters were mostly of impact origin and Gene Shoemaker revived the idea again around 1960.

Shoemaker spent much of his later years searching for and finding several previously unnoticed or undiscovered impact craters around the world.

During one such expedition, on July 18, 1997, he died in a head-on car collision on the remote Tanami Track, a few hundred kilometers northwest of Alice Springs, Australia.

[15][16][17][5] On July 31, 1999, some of his ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector space probe in a capsule designed by Carolyn Porco.

Celestis is the memorial spaceflight company that flew the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into space,[20][21][22] as well as Star Trek actor James Doohan ("Scotty"), Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper[23] and hundreds of other people from around the world.

[25] The brass foil wrapping of Shoemaker's memorial capsule is inscribed with images of Comet Hale–Bopp ("the last comet that the Shoemakers observed together"),[19] the Barringer Meteor Crater, and a quotation from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet reading And, when he shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.

[18][26] The fatal crash happened when Hale-Bopp was still visible to the naked eye, having passed perihelion and having moved into the southern celestial hemisphere.